Welcome to the Defender Podcast, a resource to help mobilize and equip the body of Christ to manifest the gospel to orphans and vulnerable children. This podcast is a ministry of Lifeline Children Services, and I'm your host, Herbie Newell. It's Wednesday, January 22, 2025, and I'm coming to you from Birmingham, Alabama. Well, today, we are so grateful to have Christy Mac Segars join us, on the Defender Podcast. And if you're taking notes at home, she has a lot of nicknames have been given to her over the time, but she goes by Christy Mac even though at times, she has been called Katie, Katie Mac.

And if you, pronounce her name to Siri, I'll just go ahead and warn you right now. Siri likes likes to say her last name as cigars, but her name is Christy Maxeyers, and she serves as the vice president of domestic services at Lifeline Children Services. She holds a bachelor's degree from my alma mater, Sanford University, and a master's in social work from the University of Alabama. Since joining Lifeline in March of 2013, she has been dedicated to delivering the gospel to families in need and advancing the ministry of reconciliation redemption through Lifeline's diverse domestic programs. She also led the creation of the Design Adoption Counseling Certificate Program in partnership with our partner Stand For Life, and that's actually what we wanna talk about today on the Defender Podcast is this Design Adoption Counseling Certificate through Stand For Life.

Christi Mac is also a frequent speaker on adoption, family preservation, and the church's role in pro life advocacy. Christi Mac obviously lives here in the Birmingham metro area with her husband Croft, and they have 3 beautiful daughters. And so before we bring on Christy Mac, I do wanna let you know that Lifeline is dedicated to offering compassionate support to women who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies and helping them explore their option. Our mission to empower the church and those on the front lines of care is continuously evolving. To advance this gospel, we have teamed up with Stand For Life to develop an important resource for counselors, church leaders, and pregnancy center staff.

And we're thrilled to announce the launch of the adoption counseling course, a free online program designed to equip you with the necessary skills to support women and unplanned pregnancies with compassion, honesty, and life affirming choices. To learn more and to register, please visit lifelinechild.org backslash adoption partner. Again, that's lifelinechild.org backslash adoption partner, or as always, you can see our show notes. And so, you know, Christy and Mag, that's that's why we're here with this podcast is to talk about this adoption counseling course, and this has been a long time in the making with Stand For Life. We've been talking about this at least for the last 2 years, this course, and, you know, I know Stand For Life has been so gracious even to send film crews to take curriculum we really already had, but to repackage it in a format that would be both enjoyable to watch, informative, easy to watch, and something that could really bless the heart of those in the pregnancy center lane, in the church lane, and really those adoption advocates.

Can you give us just a little bit of background of why this is so important and the partnership with Stand For Life?

Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. Stand For Life really has done, just just like you said, taken something that we already had where we were really training pregnancy centers and churches and hospitals on how do you bring up the option of adoption? How, how do you do this in a compassionate noncoercive way so that women can really make an informed decision about their pregnancy?

And Stand For Life recognized that this was a core need, in the pro life movement. And so, we're so grateful for the resources that they have put towards this. And this training, we have heard over and over from, individual pregnancy centers, churches, as well as the national groups that are serving pregnancy centers, that one of the main needs that they hear is they do not know how to bring up the option of adoption. They don't know how to talk about it in a way that does not feel like they are, suggesting that over parenting, or that they are, doing it in a in a way that feels like coercion. And so that's why we did this course, was to to help them be more informed to to provide an opportunity for volunteers at pregnancy centers or staff or those within churches to be able to access this, more readily, so that they can walk through it kind of on their own time, and be able to get the information that they need.

Yeah. And that one of the things I think just even to talk through that is a lot of times and and I think you would agree before Roe v Wade was overturned with the Dobbs decision, it almost felt like adoption was a bad word in the pro life ministry, because, at the end of the day, adoption ends that woman at the same place that an abortion would childless without her child. The difference is life is provided through adoption, And the reversal of Roe, it marked this pivotal milestone where I do believe that the pro life community has started to say, hey, there's more that we can do, there's more that we need to look at, and adoption, I feel like, has been elevated by the pro life movement. Just a couple of data for people to know, according to CDC data, less than 1% of women who are aged 18 to 44 have ever placed a child for adoption, while according to the Guttmacher Institute, 25% of the women in the US have had an abortion. And so when you look at those numbers where you have 25% of the women who have lost a baby, who've had a baby terminated through abortion versus less than 1% of women have ever considered or placed a child for adoption.

You see that there's a lot of work to do to elevate adoption in a place to say, this is an alternative for that 25% of those women who are choosing abortion, there is a pro life alternative that will help them realize their goals, that will help them be able to to continue their education, that will be able to not just help them continue with their life, but will also give life an opportunity to their child. So I know and and certainly I've been a part of this, but give me just some of the importance of of adoption as a life affirming option for women's women in crisis.

Yeah. And and, Herbie, I love that you're you're talking about it in in relation to the abortion option, because I think that is where people, often feel challenged in talking about this, is we know that in an unplanned pregnancy, any of the options, parenting, abortion, or adoption, are difficult. They all come with loss of some kind. They all come, with pros and cons. And so what we wanna be able to do is to help women make an informed decision that they can feel good about for themselves and for their child, and obviously, a life decision.

And so what we're trying to do with this course, Lifeline as a whole, is not necessarily pit adoption versus abortion, but to to lift the life options, of parenting and adoption. And we know that adoption is one alternative to abortion. Parenting is another alternative to abortion. But we want the women to be educated so that they can make an informed decision about those. And so so often, thinking about those stats that you just talked about, women have misinformation about adoption.

So what we're trying to do is to give them accurate information. Most people, even in the pro life movement, even those who who think they, you know, have have been aware of these things when they think about adoption, and this is one of the main things that women say, it's why they do not choose adoption, is they associate it with the foster care system. And adoption from, this private voluntary adoption plan that a woman can make is very different than what we think of when we think about adoption through foster care. And so one of the things that that we want women to know is what those differences are. This is something where she gets to choose the family.

She gets to choose the level of openness that she desires. She gets to have contact with the child and that family long term. One of the things that women really consider when they're thinking about this is what is the the the child's welfare? Like, how how is my child gonna be cared for? What's different between this and foster care is that the child goes directly into the adoptive parents' home.

They don't go from one foster home to another foster home to another foster home. And and so there the trauma is is less. Is there trauma and is there loss in adoption 100%. And we don't want to, sugarcoat that. We wanna you we wanna talk about that, but but it is definitely less than it is in a foster care situation.

So we want women to really understand adoption for what it is so that they can then make a good informed decision.

Yeah. And I think that's so important. And and and, again, I think not only with the Lifeline, but also with Staying For Life, our partner in this, the ultimate goal is is not one off interactions. It's it's not, as we would say, coercion. It's not trying to replace adoption, as the only pro life opportunity, but it really is the goal of staying for life and of Lifeline to build a culture that values and protects life.

And so to do that, I think that's why it's so important that we have this education piece, we can't just advocate for legislative change, we can't just advocate for new laws, but we also have to do the work on helping to educate change hearts, change minds, again, through the hard work of of education courses like this, through, tangible acts of love, and through equipping churches, pregnancy centers, and other pro life people to to actually have those discussions and to actually have those conversations to help educate the culture so that ultimately, one life at a time, we can begin to see culture change because we can't truly see a pro life America until hearts and minds begin to change on this issue. And so we can't just again, not saying we don't advocate for legislation, not saying that we don't advocate for changes in laws that protect babies and children. That has to happen. But, again, we also have to begin to look at changing hearts by education, changing minds, educating people on what's really happening. What is an abortion really?

What are really what really as an adoption? And, again, you're so right. So many women ultimately look at adoption in the foster care system as the same. The foster care system, as you so aptly said, is an involuntary taking of a child from a home because of a of a of a it's a situation of neglect or abuse, somewhere where the child is being harmed. An adoption journey, especially that we're talking about here, is one where the mom is empowered to make the best choice.

She's voluntarily giving up her, her parental duties. She's she's placing those in the hands of another. But even, Kirsty Mac, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what that ongoing support looks like for that mom after an adoption. For instance, we're seeing a whole lot more open adoptions, but then Lifeline as a ministry is also wrapping around these women well after they've placed for adoption. What does that support look like that really does journey with that mom even post adoption?

Yeah, absolutely. This is something that is imperative to our model and to our service. As I talked about, there there are pros and cons to every option. And so we don't want to sugarcoat the option of adoption, although we believe it is a beautiful option for women to choose life, to keep children out of foster care and all of those things. But it comes, with some hard journeys.

And so when women come to us in an unplanned pregnancy, as you talked about, we do not want this to be a one time kind of transactional thing where all we're doing is helping her place a child for adoption. Our heart and desire is for her to know Jesus, for her to hear the gospel of Jesus. And so we want to do this in a way that is relational. We do not want the women to, make an adoption plan and then be in the same situation that she was when she came to us. We wanna provide long term help and support.

And so we do that. We start our kind of aftercare and support for her really from the very beginning, from intake, in doing this in a relational way. But going ahead and talking through and thinking through what are her needs, what are her strengths that we can really maximize on, and what are the resources and support that she needs? And so, if she chooses adoption, or even if she doesn't, after that, we continue to provide both intentional, and dedicated support to her, where our pregnancy counselors are following up with her on a regular basis. We provide a, birth mother retreat, a couple of those across the country where women are able to come together and, meet each other, be supported.

We pour into them with the gospel, with some real, like, therapeutic groups. We also have an online support group, that we facilitate discussion and support so that they have that from each other. We also, one of the main things that we're trying to do through this, as well as with all of Lifeline's ministry is we want these women to be connected to the church. We know that Lifeline is not gonna be able to to be involved forever. That Lifeline's not gonna be around forever, but scripture tells us that the church will be.

And so how do we get these women connected to the church? We wanna present the gospel to them when we're working with them, but we want the church to wrap around them and support them. And so we have several ways that we do that, just through partnerships with local churches, where we are interacting with them and connecting with them. But then one very intentional way is we have a discipleship, and mentorship program called Worthy. And we are, training churches, and and women in churches to be a 1 on 1 mentor for women walking through an unplanned pregnancy or those who have walked through an unplanned pregnancy.

And so this is this is one way that we're connecting women to the church with with maybe one individual in the church, but the desire is for the whole church to wrap around her from there.

Yeah. And I think that's so important. And and, again, just a a huge piece of this course is to equip the body of Christ ultimately to manifest this beautiful gospel of orphans and vulnerable children and vulnerable women, and it it it it hearkens back even just a thought from the book of Amos. I don't know. It's a strange place to go, that minor prophet in the old testament, but he tells God's people.

He says seek good and not evil that you may live so that the lord your god of hosts will be with you. As you have said hate evil, love good, and establish justice in the gates. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. In other words, as God's people, not only are we to seek good and to to go away from evil and to fight evil, to hate evil, and to love good, but Amos here says to establish justice in the gate. And again, going back to that Old Testament, that means that God's people are supposed to be those that go into the community, go into the gates of the community, and are teaching from God's Word the things that we have learned, the things that we know, to help bring justice to the woman who is in the midst of a crisis pregnancy, to the babies that are in the womb, to the broken places of our society, the Church is the key of God's mission to bringing justice to the culture and justice to the world.

So, obviously, we've talked about that that equipping churches is a key aspect of Lifeline's mission. As we talk about this course specifically, for those that are listening that are part of a local church or maybe volunteer at their Crisis Pregnancy Center, Christy, how how can they use this education program that we've partnered with with Stand For Life to truly equip their church, to equip their pregnancy center, and to equip those in their sphere of influence to, as Amos says, establish justice in the gate.

Yeah. I love that. And I think one of the things that, makes this course so unique is that it is something that is is on our learning management system. So it's something that volunteers or staff or individual people in the church can really do on their own time. And so a pregnancy center can, utilize this as their normal, new volunteer training, or ongoing training and send their volunteers through it.

So that it's something that, each person is having this consistent message, and getting the same training throughout, within the course, there are downloadable, resources and tools, that pregnancy centers and churches are able to use from, forms that a pregnancy center can use to different, videos that they can utilize to even help talk about adoption some more. So there's many tangible resources within this. But I think talking about this, this this passage in Amos, it also makes me think about one of the things that that we hear so often, from those that are really trying to think about this is is maybe they don't know how to relate to the women. Maybe they don't understand, exactly what they have in common. And so one of the things that this course does before we really even jump into how do you tangibly talk about the option of adoption is is getting a good understanding of who these women are that you're interacting with.

And one of the things that we really try to communicate, and this is something that the Lord has taught me just in my own life, is is really going to 2nd Corinthians 5 in the Ministry of Reconciliation and remembering that I, that we, who are now believers, were once enemies of God and that Christ came to us and reconciled us to himself, and that we no longer interact and think of people according to the flesh. And and when we do that, and when we approach women with this kind of mutual understanding that that I was an enemy, before Christ reconciled me. And and so whether she's a believer or an unbeliever, we are equal at that foot of the cross. We are equal there. And what is beautiful about that passage in 2nd Corinthians 5 is that it talks about that now that Christ has reconciled us, he gives us a gift, and that gift is the Ministry of Reconciliation, and he calls us to be his ambassadors in that.

And so this course helps us understand that we are his ambassadors, just like you talked about, that this is who God has called. He has called his church into this messy ministry. And so this this course helps those walking through it understand, 1, their their their own selves and and being reminded that that we have been reconciled to God. And therefore, now we have this ministry of reconciliation where we are approaching these women with humility and with grace and with love and with compassion, that their one need is our one need, and that's Jesus.

Man, that's beautiful. And certainly, like Christy Mac said, if you wanna get engaged with this program, it is already on our learning management system. Like we said at the offset, if you go to lifelinechild.org/adoptionpartner, again, that's lifelinechild.org/adoptionpartner, You can view this course for free, you can take this course, you can share it with your community, you can share it with your church. We hope that this course will be a means of God's grace to truly begin to start to do justice in the gates, to show grace, and start to, one life by one life, change the hearts and the minds of our culture back towards a pro life ethic. Well, Christy Mac, thanks for being here.

As always, thank you for what you do, and is there any last thing that you would want anyone to know either about Lifeline's domestic ministry or about this course?

I think just really encouraging people to participate in it, and whether you are just, an individual wanting to know more about adoption and how to do it or you, really can influence a pregnancy center or a network to do this. The more people who are educated and informed about it, the more we can help change that narrative. So thank you so much, Herbie, for having me.

Amen. Well, as always, join us on Wednesdays for the Defender Podcast and on Mondays for the Defender Bible Study, and we hope to see you back next week. Thanks for listening to The Defender Podcast. If you enjoy making this podcast a part of your weekly routine, we'd love for you to take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review The Defender Podcast to make it easier for more people to find. For more information on how you and your church can partner with Lifeline, visit us at lifelinechild.org.

If you want to connect with me, please visit herbynewell.com. Follow us at lifeline on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter by searching for Lifeline Child. You can email us directly at info at lifelinechild.org. Beloved, will you allow God to use the gospel through you to impact the life of a child? Please contact us because we are here to defend the fatherless.

We'll see you again next week for the Defender podcast.